


Come, take fifty.

by PepperCat



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Aromantic Character, Awkward Tension, Birthday Presents, Fights, Fluff, Kidnapping, M/M, averted break up, which doesn’t come up but I feel it’s a good thing to not erase dammit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 23:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10476657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: After a bitter disagreement, Axel tries to make it up to Hartley. Hartley's pretty much convinced himself the relationship's just a bad idea.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Sister_Grimm](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sister_Grimm/pseuds/Sister_Grimm), with who I first blue-skied the awful, awful conversation which led to the idea of this fic, back in _August_.

"I got you a birthday present," Axel said.

It was delivered in nearly the same tone of voice as _for the record, you're an asshole_ , which had been the last full sentence Axel had spoken to him, nearly four days ago. The second-last one, before Hartley had lost his temper, had been _You had to know they wouldn't love you anymore_ and the one before that had been _You're smart, so I'm just trying to get why you told them._

Hartley wasn't ready to admit that breaking out his gloves had been an overreaction, but he had missed Axel talking to him. Even in this grimly annoyed way.

"Fantastic," he said, and that wasn't enough, he was trying to think of what to add to it so it'd actually be enough words to keep the exchange going and they could start something like a conversation. Even an argument might be alright, as long as he could keep from yelling. Axel yelled sometimes but that wasn't as much of a problem, it— "Even _I_ can't imagine why you went out of your way to do that."

Dammit. He took a quick glance up, long enough to catch that Axel was standing square in the doorway and not leaning against it as he might have in more casual moments, and went back to his laptop screen.

"You need to come take a look at it," Axel said doggedly.

"I'll make sure to do that."

"You need to come _now_ , Pipes. It's not gonna keep really well. You need to figure out what you wanna to do with it."

Hartley blinked at that and looked up. Axel's head was bent forward a little and his jaw stuck slightly out, hands curled into loose fists by his sides, but Hartley knew enough not to read that as a threat. When Axel was looking to hit something he didn't stand straight and keep his hands down. He was just doing something he didn't want to do.

Apparently talking to Hartley counted as that, right now. Fantastic.

"Birthday presents aren't usually supposed to be work for the person you give them to, Axel." God _fucking_ dammit, he was still too angry to say anything nice, but why couldn't he at least manage something neutral? The knot in his throat was all hard edges and even talking to Axel hurt. It reminded him of everything he'd wanted to say over the last four days that he hadn't managed to break the silence for.

"You'll like this one," Axel said, and Hartley felt his own mouth draw down at the corners. There was a lot to say about exactly how reliable Axel's understanding of him was—

The last four days had been _awful_ , and while there was a certain level of snappishness that was too much of a habit to bite back when he was angry, he managed not to descend to deliberate cruelty. Just sat there, all the words stuck in his throat.

Axel started to grin at the hesitation. He leaned forward, drummed a quick tattoo on the doorjamb and hung onto it with one hand as he leaned into Hartley's room and stretched out the other. "Come on, Pipes. Come see what I got you. Maybe I don't always get what makes you miserable, but you _know_ I know what you like." His grin went wide and wicked by that last line, and Hartley swallowed. It hurt.

"How long will it take?" There. That wasn't gracious, but it was at least neutral. Axel laughed a little and wiggled the fingers on his outstretched hand.

"That's up to you, Pipes," and _this is a bad idea_ , it's such a bad idea, it feels like sooner or later they always end up fighting. But Axel's hand was warm and his grin was infectious and Hartley let himself be pulled out of his room and down the hall and out the door.

Axel had a car—Hartley didn't recognize it, but he didn't really expect to recognize the cars Axel turned up with—and he even put his seatbelt on without Hartley saying anything, but he smiled while he did it. Hartley wanted to smile and wanted to complain that Axel was taking the familiarity between them to mean that things were alright when they definitely weren't and ended up just looking down at his hands.

"You couldn't—" he started, and then caught his tone and started over. "What did you get me?" He heard Axel chuckle. "It's not rats, is it?"

"Nothing like that," Axel said. "Not anything that'd hurt your rats, either. It was kind of tricky to get, though." He laughed a little. "I had to get Sparky to help me pick it up."

Hartley looked up from his hands. "You brought Mardon into this?"

"I promised him my next share," Axel said. He flashed Hartley a grin, then looked back to the road and his voice grew serious. "But your present's just from me, okay, Pipes? He's hired help. That's all. This is from _me_."

"Alright," Hartley said. He couldn't think of anything else to add, so he leaned back and closed his eyes.

Great. Axel's idea of an apology was stealing something perishable and apparently extremely difficult to get to, and then dragging Hartley out to appreciate it. It wasn't Hartley's idea of a particularly good time.

Maybe he should just end it. This. The big fights weren't especially frequent, but they weren't fun—although making up felt good, sometimes really good—and they always seemed to circle back to having one spat or another. And besides that it was just that Axel didn't seem to _get_ him. The last big blow-up had been after Axel had found out about Hartley's history with the STAR Labs explosion—

_Your boss **planned** that and you helped him pull it off? Seriously, **best** prank of 2013!_

—and Hartley hadn't been able to speak to him without snarling for a week.

Definitely mismatched perspectives. You could only do so much to get past that.

He opened his eyes as Axel parked the car and glanced around. Warehouse district, unsurprising but functional.

He unsnapped his seatbelt. Axel reached over as he did, and his hand on Hartley's wrist was startling in its warmth.

"Look," he said. "This isn't gonna be everything you want. I can't swing that. But I'm doing the best I can. What you want doesn't always make sense to me, but I've got a pretty good idea of what it _is_. So just give this a shot, okay? And if you decide it's not your thing—" He swallowed and his grin vanished for a second, came back shining and soft. "That's okay, Pipes. I won't be mad if you decide you don't like it."

That awful jagged feeling in Hartley's throat was growing heavier. He could recognize a sensible decision and still regret it, especially with Axel's touch warm on his skin. "What if I've already decided?"

"Take a look first, Pipes."

Hartley blinked and reran Axel's words through his mind. "You're talking about the present," he said carefully. "The gift."

"Yeah. Come on." Axel squeezed his wrist again, then swung the door open and got out of the car. Hartley followed.

The inside was dim, not dusty but full of a smell like empty bookshelves. Hartley listened and heard something shuffling a little, but the hard empty spaces meant the echoes kept bouncing back and his heart wasn't in it.

He shouldn't have come in. He should have insisted on staying outside, or staying at home. Now he had to find a way to say something like _thanks but no thanks also we should end this_ to Axel Walker—not that he was actually frightened of the man, at least—and if he'd gotten up the nerve to do it anytime over the last four days instead of just fuming in his room he could have spared both of them the unpleasantness. Now it was going to be so much worse than it had to be.

Hartley tried to swallow and couldn't.

It was the only reasonable conclusion. It _was_. And one of them had to be an adult about this—

"Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Close your eyes. Or take off your glasses, if you like, we're almost there and I don't want you to see it before I turn the lights on—" Hartley closed his eyes and felt Axel touch the back of his neck, very gently. "Okay, cool. Come on."

There were a few more shuffling steps, a corner, and a click and the familiar hum of wire and filament as electric light printed itself redly against his eyelids. Hartley opened his eyes and blinked against the brightness.

His parents were sitting in the center of the room, duct-taped to chairs. _Throughly_ duct-taped to chairs, criss-crossing strips of clashing colours of tape. There were large fluffy bows covering the upper half of their torso, yellow and blue.

" _...Axel?_ " he said in a strangled voice.

His father glowered. His mother looked offended. Both expressions were somewhat muted by strips of neon orange duct tape pressed firmly across their mouths. HAZARD was written on his father's. His mother's said CAUTION.

"See?" Axel said gleefully. "You like it? They can't ignore you _now_." His grin widened. "They'll _listen_ to you! Swear to god they will. I said that if they don't—"

"Axel." Hartley found his voice. "Axel, Ax— For the love of my sanity, Axel, please _stop talking—_ "

Axel laughed and crossed his arms around Hartley's shoulders, nuzzled his ear. His breath was hot and ticklish, but Hartley didn't pull away, started to shiver—cold air, warm breath, that was all of it, had to be all of it—and stood like that for a moment, staring. Thought of phone calls that had never made it past the hired help and letters unacknowledged and all the words he'd never gotten out for anyone to hear...

After a moment came "Hey," low and careful, so low his parents couldn't have heard, so low he wasn't sure even _Axel_ could have heard himself speak, "you good, Pipes? You okay?"

Hartley tried to answer and couldn't, nodded instead. Heard Axel make a sound between a groan and a purr, content.

"I can't make them talk to you like you deserve," he said softly, "but at least _you_ can talk to _them_." Hartley felt lips curving into a grin against his ear, the light touch of breath, and all the warmth of Axel at his back and around his shoulders. "I know you keep trying to tell them things. This is a bit of what you want, right? Not all of it, not how you wanted it, but a bit?"

"A bit." That awful knot in his throat was starting to melt, and he reached up to wrap his hands around Axel's wrists, hold on. Axel laughed and hugged him tighter, grip warm and firm.

"Happy birthday, Pipes."

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Robert Browning's "[The Pied Piper of Hamelin](http://www.bartleby.com/360/6/51.html)". The line when the Mayor and his cronies are going back on the agreement they made with the Piper runs "A thousand guilders? Come, take fifty!" Given that I am _chronically_ unable to come up with titles, it seemed like not a bad line to reflect both that his parents failed him and disowned him, and that even Axel's gift isn't a fraction of what he'd like to be able to give Hartley. It's also a far more extreme version of the phrase "take five", which Hartley could occasionally stand to do.
> 
> Something I noticed when picking the title; in Browning's poem, the Pied Piper stole all the children on July 22. Hartley's birthday is on _June_ 22; I like to imagine that DC was going to give him July 22 as a birthday and just shuffled it around by a month so that it wouldn't be on the same day that the JLA was organized.


End file.
